blah.

i guess it's time to write again.

this will be free writing. unrestrained and untempered. because i'm tired of writing about things that i don't want to write about. i'm exhausted from always trying to be a version of myself that is not me. i've had it with all the feigned pleasantries and willed optimism.

i am just so tired.

it's been a while since my last post and, looking at how i spun my words back then, i think it's both interesting and tragic that a person can change so drastically in such a short span of time.

for the preliminaries.

i've achieved my dream of becoming a lawyer.

all my life, i've held on to this dream - from a little boy whose interest was piqued by the enigma of the universe to a grown adult who has been broken to the world. probably, i am at fault for expecting too much from life and my childhood dream. probably, it's my escapism and naivete that is to blame because i thought that becoming a lawyer will be the emancipation of all my evils. that after i hurdle the bar exams and triumph, i will automatically become the best version of myself.

i could not be any more wrong.

i could have probably tempered my naivete and realized earlier on that self-polishing is constant and always tedious. that one doesn't simply become a better version of himself by hurdling through self-imagined limitations and barriers. that the bar exams and me becoming a lawyer aren't ends that would automatically translate to a happier, much more fulfilled me.

because, if truth be told, i've never been more miserable. i feel depression creeping in, but i know that i can do nothing to keep it bay or prevent the imminent explosion of the proverbial dam.

for almost two years now, i've been trying my best to be the best version of myself. i got hired in one of the more prestigious law firms here in makati and i know that, from the outside, i seem to be living the life that i've always been destined to live. but i'm sad. i'm constantly sad. there are days when i just lie in bed and stare into nothingness as i convince myself to get up, change for work, and pretend to be happy with what i'm doing. and then there are days when i just cry. i randomly cry. because i know that, deep within the recesses of my soul, i am nowhere near my end goal of being happy. my heart feels empty, and when my nights are especially long and i am by my lonesome trying to stitch together a decent pleading that is due the next day, i feel so exhausted and spent that i just want to go somewhere where no one knows me, be with a stranger who will see me weep, but will just let me be.

being a good, or even just a decent, lawyer can drain your entirety. you regularly deal with problems of other people, and you constantly pretend that you know your shit, even when in reality, your brain screams from the inside and it tells you: i don't fucking care because i have my own shit to deal with. but you just have to smile. and blurt out a legal opinion from scratch. because that's what people expect to hear from you. and, of course, since you're a people pleaser, you want to tell them what they need to hear, and wait for their thanks and affirmation.

probably i'm not a good lawyer. or i'm not good enough. or i will never be good enough. this has been a constant source of discomfort for the entire time that i've been with my firm. at first, and as expected, this greatly unsettled me, because no one wants to embrace mediocrity and brandish it for all the world to see. but through time, and as my self-loathing and self-inflicted torment became much more frequent and eventually swallowed me whole, i just don't fucking care. call me mediocre. i don't give a tiny rat's ass. call me below par. that's your fucking problem. call out my grammar and my propensity for muddling clarity. that's your business not mine. call me inferior. i don't give a fuck.

i've never been sadder.

and my depression has never been this debilitating.

i think i need rescuing.